North Korea Reopens Borders in Time for Marathon

BEIJING — Foreigners wanting to compete in the Pyongyang marathon next month can now get ready to pack their running shoes since North Korea has reopened its borders this week after a four-month closing over Ebola fears.

To race in the streets of Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, runners will need to sign up through one of the package tours offered by companies based outside the country and will have to fly through China.

One of those companies, Koryo Tours, a longtime British-run operator based in Beijing, sent out a marketing email on Thursday saying that “foreign amateurs” would be allowed to take part in the April 12 race and that the tour company was taking applications until March 16.

“This has been a truly extraordinary period in the history of North Korean travel, and we’d like to genuinely thank all of our tourists for being so understanding during what must have been an extremely frustrating time for you during all the recent uncertainty,” the company said in the email.

The general opening of the border to foreigners again is being welcomed by tour operators like Koryo and tourists who had signed up for various 2015 tour packages, including the marathon. Tours were canceled starting in fall 2014 after North Korean officials barred foreigners from entering their country.

Last spring was the first time that North Korea allowed amateur runners from outside the country to take part in the marathon, and only by joining specific tour groups. The Pyongyang marathon was first held in 1981, with the race open only to men until 1984.

Uri Tours, based in New Jersey, said on its website on Wednesday that officials had reopened the Mangyongdae Prize International Marathon to foreigners after having canceled foreign participation in February. The company said that registration for foreigners had been extended until March 20.

North Korea closed its borders in late October and imposed strict travel limits on citizens returning from abroad. Even senior officials had to undergo quarantine. There are no signs that anyone inside North Korea has contracted the Ebola virus, which resurfaced in early 2014 in West Africa.

Chinese tourists regularly visit North Korea, and China is also the most common transit point for non-Chinese aiming to travel to the country. But tourism is still a nascent industry in North Korea.

In April of last year, Kim To-jun, the head of North Korea’s General Bureau of Tourism, told a visiting senior Chinese tourism official that North Korea was eager to attract more Chinese tourists since China was its most important tourism market, according to a report on the Chinese National Tourism Administration website.

Mr. Kim told Kyodo News, the Japanese news agency, in an interview last September that North Korea had 100,000 tourists in 2013, the majority from China and Russia. He added that there had been growing numbers of tourists from Britain, Germany and Southeast Asian nations.

In 2011, a state-owned company under North Korea’s National Defense Commission tried to market a holiday cruise to foreigners, particularly Chinese travelers, but Chinese travel agency executives and foreign journalists who went on the inaugural run of the refurbished ship, the Mangyongbong, from the northern port city of Rason to Mount Kumgang in the south, complained of conditions on board. The regular cruises never took off.

In April, Jeffrey E. Fowle, an Ohio municipal worker on a group tour, was detained by North Korean security officials and held for nearly six months after officers discovered he had left a Bible under a bin in a toilet stall at a club for foreign sailors.

The announcements about the reopening of the border were made by Koryo Tours, Uri and other foreign-based tour companies this week. They said the North Korean government had made its decision on Monday.

Uri Tours said on its website that it would run its first tour of the year, a standard five-day package, in late March.

Calls seeking comment from the North Korean Embassy in Beijing on Thursday went unanswered.